Chapter 68: UR AND SA

Burnt fur soured the chamber after the Cragbone finished speaking. Soot still powdered Sterling’s gloves, heat breathed off the stone around Angle’s feet, and both bears sat upright among the ruined figures with their forepaws resting against their knees. Sio kept the blade curled along his arm while the pull beneath his right eye continued somewhere beyond them.

Sterling stared at the bear whose skull he had just watched rebuild itself. "You can talk." One of its ears tilted, and the other bear gave a low sound that might have been amusement. "Did humans truly come to believe they were the only people capable of thought?" it asked. "There were elves, dwarves, beastfolk, mythics, and others whose names your languages no longer carry. Humans were the youngest of us."

Sio glanced at the worn figures around the chamber. "Youngest?" The first bear lowered one claw into a groove hidden beneath the mineral crust. Pale light sputtered through the stone, raced along the wall, failed for a breath, then returned in broken strips while dust whispered down from the ceiling.

The wall filled with a place that no longer existed. A broad underground platform stretched through warm light, trees growing between benches while clear water moved beneath sections of glass floor. A silver carriage slid in without smoke, its doors opening into a crowd that barely looked up.

A dwarf woman balanced three cups while a horned child tried to steal the top one. A human boy slept against the shoulder of a long-eared woman who kept reading. Two children, one human and one covered in short brown fur, raced around a bench until a winged station worker caught both by their shirts and marched them back toward laughing parents. The carriage chimed, bodies shifted to make room for one another, and the doors closed.

Sterling stepped so close that the light swallowed the beam from his lamp. A transit board flickered above the platform, half its letters eaten by static, but several destinations and travel times remained. His finger stopped beneath one. "Forty-three minutes? That city is across the continent." The bear beside him barely moved. "It was."

The image skipped. Towers rose beneath daylight, pale walls broken by gardens spilling over terraces. Water ran openly beside walkways while small machines repaired a bridge and people ate at tables a few steps away. A dwarf and an elf leaned over a board game, arguing with their hands. A beastkin woman pushed a sleeping human child in a wheeled seat while another child with short horns ran beside her. Higher up, silent vehicles crossed between buildings without leaving smoke behind.

Angle’s gaze caught on a man kneeling beside a boy near the edge of the projection. The man tightened a glove around the child’s wrist, checked it twice, then sent him running after the others. The image tore apart before the boy reached them, leaving Angle staring at bare stone and a few weak sparks of light.

Sio looked toward the broken benches and bronze fittings they had passed on the way down. "That was here?" Sterling turned at the same time, his eyes moving across the walls as if the cave had changed shape around him. The second bear answered, "Not this city. One of many." Its brother tapped the floor. "This was a Metro station. When the Metro failed, cities and continents were cut off from one another."

Sio looked between them. "You two have names, right? I can’t keep calling you the one Angle cooked and the one I stabbed." The first bear touched its chest. "Ur." Its brother followed. "Sa." Sio waited for the rest, but neither of them added anything.

Sterling mouthed both names together. "Ur... Sa." The twins looked at him. Sa blinked slowly and said, "Together, Ursa." Sio glanced from one to the other. "You split one name between two people?" Ur answered, "It saves time." Sa scratched beneath his jaw. "It has never saved time." Ur turned toward him.

Light crawled over the wall again. Ur watched fragments of the old city reform. "Humans came later than the rest of us. You learned quickly, changed quickly, and asked questions older peoples had stopped asking." Sa’s claws clicked against the floor. "You were also loud." Ur ignored him. "That was not the problem. The world grew because none of us thought exactly alike."

The projection stopped on an ordinary street. Someone carried groceries beneath one arm. Children crowded around a fountain. An old human and a horned man argued over a board game while pedestrians flowed around them.

Ur lowered his head. "Then came the Snake." Sterling turned from the wall. "Another extinct species?" Neither twin answered him. Sa watched the frozen people and said, "It taught mankind to look at enough and see too little." Ur’s claw left the groove. "Humans listened. They reached for more, and what all of us had built did not survive the reaching." The light collapsed back into wet stone, leaving only soot, mineral damp and the smell of cooked meat.

For several breaths nobody spoke. Then Ur lowered his head toward Angle. "We owe you an apology for the first examination." Angle looked at the black scorch across the floor, then at the skull he had burned into ash. "That was an examination?" Sa’s gaze followed his. "The danger had to be believed. Otherwise the test would measure nothing."

Ur’s eyes passed over Sio and settled beyond his shoulder. "You are the two hundred and thirty-seventh candidate presented for the role of the Sunfarer. Of all the candidates brought before this test, you are only the second it has accepted for the next stage." Angle’s fingers closed around the left gauntlet strap, but Sio answered before he did. "Second means somebody was first. Who?"

Tiny claws clicked from the passage behind Ursa. Sio knew the sound before Rhea stepped into the chamber, and whatever question had been forming disappeared when he saw Gumm wrapped comfortably around her neck.

Gumm stared at him with several bright eyes and chirped. Sio raised one arm. The creature considered it, shifted closer to Rhea’s shoulder and tucked its head beside her neck.

Traitor.

Rhea stopped when she caught Sio’s expression. "What?" Sio lowered his arm and said, "Nothing. I just crossed half a cave looking for someone who apparently found better transportation." Gumm chirped again while Rhea scratched beneath his jaw, which did nothing to improve the situation.

Ur inclined his head toward her. "She was the first to clear this test." Rhea’s ears shifted once as she looked toward the dead projection, but she said nothing.

Sa placed both forepaws against the floor. Thin lines of light spread beneath them and branched through the chamber. Rhea’s hand drifted toward the bare wrist where the stone cuff had once sat. "What does the next test give the winner?"

"Veilhollow guards a Vestige," Ur said. "A fragment of knowledge preserved from the world before the Fall. Other ruins guard others." Sterling leaned forward, but Rhea spoke before him. Her thumb rubbed once across the bare skin of her wrist. "Can it return something that was forgotten?"

Ur studied her before answering. "It preserves what was entrusted to it. What you recover from that depends on what Veilhollow remembers." Rhea’s hand fell to her side, and her tail stopped moving behind her. "That’s enough."

Angle looked down at the lines between his boots. "What is the second test?" Sa turned his muzzle toward the passages around the chamber. "There is one exit. The first candidate across it earns the right to the Vestige. The other does not."

Sio frowned. "What happens to the one who loses?" Ur’s gaze lifted toward the dark ceiling. "The losing candidate remains here. They take our place as examiner until the Between gives them another task to complete." Sio followed his gaze and found only stone. "The Between?"

Sa answered first. "A place where everything exists." Ur’s voice came after his, quieter. "And nothing exists at all. When it calls the examiner elsewhere, they leave Veilhollow and answer whatever task it gives them." Sterling stared at the twins for a moment. "That explained less than the name did." Sa nodded once. "Yes."

Sterling pushed his glasses higher. "Then what about the rest of us? Did I pass the first test too, or have I just been standing inside somebody else’s examination?" Ur looked from Sterling to Sio and finally toward Gumm around Rhea’s neck. "All five of you passed the first test. Two of you are candidates. The others earned the right to assist either side and leave Veilhollow with whichever candidate succeeds."

Sterling absorbed that, looked at Angle, then Rhea, then the passages around the chamber. He lowered himself against the nearest stone wall and stretched out his legs. "Excellent. You two do the difficult part. I’ll leave with whoever wins." Sio stared at him until Sterling adjusted his glasses. "What? The rules have finally rewarded neutrality."

Angle ignored him and watched Rhea instead. Sio followed his gaze and remembered the last time they had tried meeting her strength directly, how quickly the fight had stopped feeling like a fight. "Going through her sounds stupid." Angle’s mouth tightened as his thumb brushed once over the strap at his left wrist. "Yeah. We’re not doing that again."

Rhea heard them and gave no sign that the conversation bothered her. Gumm remained looped around her neck while her fingers rested near the bare wrist she had touched earlier, and Sio could not tell whether she was watching the passages or something much farther away.

Ur and Sa looked at one another. Pale fur and mineral armor began breaking into fine grains along their shoulders, the dust lifting instead of falling while their outlines thinned against the ruined carvings. Sa disappeared first. Ur remained long enough to look once toward Angle and once toward Rhea, then the last of him scattered upward and vanished into the dark.